Poverty: Not just Mitt's PR misstep

Every night, millions of American moms and dads say prayers for their kids. But too many hardworking parents go to sleep praying they won’t have to tell the kids they need to move in with relatives because they can’t make rent. Or perhaps those prayers are from a parent looking for a way to care for a sick child without getting fired for missing a few shifts at work.

These are the prayers of nearly 50 million Americans living below the poverty line — as well as the tens of millions more lower-income Americans struggling to stay in the middle class.

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Last week, Washington hosted the National Prayer Breakfast, a powerful gathering of moral and spiritual leaders from across the nation. This week we must turn the attention of policy leaders to the difficulties of the very poor and those skirting the edges of poverty. Almost one-half of our neighbors are one crisis — a lost job, sick child or broken-down car — away from poverty.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the leading GOP presidential candidate, may well be praying that the media move beyond his controversial quote about “the very poor.” But the real problem is bad policy and values — not a bad interview.

Romney has made himself the poster child of the 1 percent by insisting that he’s “not concerned about the very poor.” He has said this twice in as many months. This is a man who literally makes more money off his trust funds in one night’s sleep than a minimum-wage worker breaking her back for 40 hours a week makes in a year.

Would Romney consider those workers — waitresses, home health care providers or janitors — the “very poor”? Too many of these hardworking individuals wake up every day on the cusp of poverty. Are those Americans truly not worthy of concern? Would Romney be willing to bet that $10,000 — more than many of these people make in nine months — to see if he could survive with dignity one week in their shoes?

Romney’s callous comments could not have come at a worse time for Republicans in Congress. They recently proposed to pay for working Americans’ desperately needed payroll tax cuts by taking food from children of taxpaying immigrant workers.

The ideological contrast could not be more obvious. The Democrats offered proposals that provide tax relief to working families and small-business owners through a small surtax on those making more than $1 million per year. The GOP alternative is to demonize and punish poor American children, paying for the payroll tax extension by cutting the tax credit for U.S. children of tax-paying immigrant workers.

Some political analysts made this a story about Romney’s penchant for verbal slip-ups. But the real problem is one of policy, not PR. It’s his moral framework, not his misstatements.